‘Toxic’: Hilton Head town council candidates condemn mayor’s secret Sea Pines meeting
The six people running for Hilton Head Island Town Council this year had a message for another group of six who met privately last week in Sea Pines to discuss a massive public infrastructure project: That’s illegal.
All the candidates for council denounced the private meeting, which some Facebook commentators said represented an “old boy’s club” that permeates Hilton Head politics.
“I believe it’s illegal. I truly believe that’s an illegal act,” Ward 3 candidate Tom Reitz said. “Whoever was involved with that should be taken out of office immediately.”
Other candidates criticized the slate of local elected officials as a whole.
“This is the least transparent mayor and council I can remember,” Ward 6 candidate Kent Berry said.
David Ames, who is running for reelection to Ward 3 on the Town Council and was the only member of the intergovernmental committee not present at the Sea Pines meeting, also said he doesn’t support breaking the law and discussing public business in private.
“I think it’s bad policy, and it creates a toxic environment for us to solve problems,” Ames said. “It’s the wrong thing to do.”
The candidates were asked by the forum’s moderator what their position was on “local power brokers holding a secret meeting with top Hilton Head officials on the U.S. 278 project without the interest of native island families and property owners represented.”
Her question clearly referenced a Sept. 22 meeting between Mayor John McCann, Assistant Town Manager Josh Gruber, Town Council members Bill Harkins and Tom Lennox, County Council member Stu Rodman and Sea Pines resident Tom Sharp. The group met at Fraser’s Tavern, which overlooks a golf course in the gated community.
Ward 1 candidate Alex Brown told The Island Packet he was invited to the meeting but did not attend. He said he didn’t know who else was going to be there, but that he’s met with Sharp and Rodman before to discuss the U.S. 278 project.
He said he often felt like the “token” Gullah representative of the Stoney community in the meetings, although he does not live in the community at the base of the bridges.
Stoney homes will be moved or at least disrupted by the highway project because all options for the project include adding another lane of traffic to U.S. 278, whether in the existing highway footprint or north of the road.
Brown added Wednesday that the group of officials who met about the U.S. 278 project have ignored asks by the community, including from him, for an independent engineering review of the alternatives for the corridor. Earlier this month, Beaufort County Council directed County Administrator to create a plan for an independent review.
Is it legal?
The elected officials at the meeting didn’t represent a quorum of Town Council, but Harkins’ and Lennox’s attendance created a quorum of the town’s intergovernmental committee. When an Island Packet reporter showed up at the meeting, believing the meeting should be open to the public, he was repeatedly asked to leave.
Media law attorney Jay Bender said the requirements for public meetings are clearly defined in state law. There is no ambiguity.
“That meeting was illegal,” Bender said. “They should’ve provided public notice. This is just another case of people in Beaufort County thinking they can avoid the law.”
But Gruber was quick to offer an explanation.
Because the intergovernmental committee does not have “supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power” over what was discussed at the meeting, he said, it was allowed to be held out of the public eye.
But Harkins told The Island Packet he liked the ideas for the U.S. 278 corridor put forth by Sharp, a former commissioner of the Indiana Department of Transportation. He said he plans to put Sharp’s presentation on the next agenda for his intergovernmental committee.
That move brings information from the private meeting into public consideration, and raises even more questions for Bender about the information’s origins in a private meeting.
“The meeting was illegal when you have a quorum of the public committee ... the agenda is confirmation that it was a public body meeting to consider something within its scope,” he said.
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More lunch meetings?
The Sea Pines meeting isn’t the first time McCann and other council members have met privately to discuss town business, although it is the first that has been blasted as problematic. McCann and elected officials are free to meet with each other one on one and with constituents to discuss issues.
Problems arise when quorums of committees or the council meet privately. The Freedom of Information Act requires those meetings be publicly accessible, with public notice provided.
The Island Packet has reported McCann has tacked nearly $4,000 onto his $25,000 salary in the last two years via meal reimbursements for meetings with public officials and constituents.
His lunch meetings often included Lennox and Harkins, although McCann also dined with all other members of council separately. But he also met with residents immediately before important votes.
In July and August 2019, he was reimbursed for about two meals per week — usually lunch meetings to discuss home rule, apartment developments and transportation.
At a regularly scheduled July 16 finance committee meeting, McCann sat in on discussions about giving a free lease to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. He was given a $50 meeting stipend for attending.
Two days later, receipts show McCann and County Council chair Stu Rodman met at Frankie Bones to discuss the budget, and McCann later wrote Rodman, suggesting the town cut $3 million from the sheriff’s office budget, as reported by The Island Packet. When asked about the letter, McCann said Rodman knew the letter was coming because the two had discussed it.
On Aug. 28, McCann met with lawyer Alfred Vadnais to discuss home rule, according to his $44 receipt. At the next council meeting on Sept. 17, the council discussed 5G facilities, where McCann explicitly defined the discussion as an issue of legislative home rule.
Although all candidates promised during Tuesday’s debate that they would follow Freedom of Information Act requirements and conduct public business in public, others took the opportunity to chastise their fellow council members.
“Some people weren’t thinking very well, and they got caught,” said Ward 6 representative Glenn Stanford, who is up for election.
This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 11:26 AM.
